After telling Mirusu to capture anyone who tried to flee from the Dolan Workshop, Rei returned to the battle against the golems.
The golem he headed toward stood about three meters tall.
However, it was not humanoid in shape but formed like a dog or wolf.
In sheer size alone, it even surpassed Seto, and it possessed considerable agility to match.
On top of that, unlike ordinary monsters, precisely because it was a golem, its body was equipped with multiple blades—blades that looked as though they had been repurposed from longswords—making them extremely troublesome for anyone fighting it.
"Uwaaaah!"
With a high-pitched clang, an adventurer somehow managed to deflect a blade that had been aimed to bisect his torso, catching it with his own longsword.
But unlike the man, who had poured every ounce of strength into that deflection, the golem had simply sprinted past him.
Even that alone carried more than enough force to be lethal...
"Damn it! What the hell is with this golem! Is Rei still not here?!"
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
Just as one of the adventurers cried out Rei's name in desperation, Rei appeared as if he had been waiting for exactly that moment.
The Dolan Workshop golems Rei had fought up to this point had all been fundamentally humanoid.
In that sense, a dog-shaped golem sprouting multiple blades from a non-humanoid body was somewhat unusual.
That said, looking at the golems produced in Egginis, non-humanoid forms were fairly common.
Since they primarily fought humans—or perhaps because nobles preferred them as showpieces—the Dolan Workshop's golems tended toward humanoid shapes.
Among the Workshop's golems, then, a non-humanoid one was a rarity.
"Still, it's basically the same as fighting a monster, right? ...Here I go!"
Wielding Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear as usual, Rei charged at the dog-shaped golem.
The golem opened its mouth wide, baring sharp fangs, intent on crushing Rei between its jaws.
A core made from a human soul—did it function just fine in a non-humanoid body?
Rei wondered that for a moment, but deciding there was no need to worry on the enemy's behalf, he threw the Twilight Spear first as a probing strike.
"Awoooooon!"
The instant it saw the Twilight Spear hurtling toward it, the dog-shaped golem threw its mouth open wide and unleashed a howl.
That the golem could produce a cry at all was somewhat unexpected to Rei.
But his surprise only deepened the very next moment.
The Twilight Spear, flying straight toward the golem, was clearly deflected off its trajectory.
There was almost no loss of power, but the spear missed the golem entirely and veered off in a different direction.
Seeing that, Rei immediately recalled the Twilight Spear to his hand.
(The deflection was clearly caused by that howl. I have no idea what the logic behind it is, but as long as that howl is in play, throwing the spear isn't viable, huh?)
Even with spear throwing—one of his attack options—taken off the table, it wasn't much of a blow to Rei.
It was true that losing the ability to throw the spear stung, but if he couldn't use it, he simply had to attack by other means.
"Awoooooooon!"
The dog-shaped golem howled once more.
Rei understood what effect that howl carried the moment a powerful shockwave slammed into his body.
That said, for Rei wearing the Dragon Robe, an attack like that was virtually ineffective.
If that shockwave had functioned like Vihera's Magic Impact Palm, capable of driving a shock directly into the target's interior, that would have been another matter entirely.
But the shockwave released by the dog-shaped golem simply didn't carry that kind of power.
...Though several of the adventurers behind Rei were sent flying spectacularly.
"Not bad."
Judging the dog-shaped golem to be a reasonably formidable opponent, Rei swung Death Scythe in a wide arc.
"Flying Slash!"
The unleashed slash flew toward the dog golem as if in retaliation for the earlier shockwave.
A flying slash born from Death Scythe.
The dog-shaped golem must have recognized it as a dangerous attack. It evaded with a wide leap to the side... which was exactly what Rei had been counting on.
He closed the distance in a single burst, bearing down on the golem that had jumped sideways.
Noticing Rei's approach, the dog-shaped golem opened its mouth wide once more...
"Don't think the same trick works twice!"
With that shout, Rei ate up the final step and closed the gap to roughly five meters.
But right at that moment, another shockwave began to build in the golem's gaping maw...
"Underground Transfer Slash!"
Activating the skill, Rei swung Death Scythe toward the ground.
What would normally have been a strike to dig up earth was nothing of the sort—Death Scythe's blade slipped into the ground... and in the next instant, it erupted from right beneath the dog-shaped golem's feet, shearing through a foreleg.
"Gah!?"
The dog-shaped golem let out a bewildered cry, seemingly unable to comprehend what had just been done to it.
That a Death Scythe strike had transferred through the ground and severed one of its forelegs—there was no way it could make sense of that.
Robbed of its balance, the golem was already no match for Rei.
Closing the distance in one surge, Rei drove the Twilight Spear through its head, shattering it, and a single blow from Death Scythe cleaved its torso in half.
After a brief glance at the fallen golem, Rei moved on to the next... and in less than ten minutes, every golem that had burst through the Dolan Workshop's walls was annihilated.
"Now then, the rest are the ones who fled from the Dolan Workshop. ...Or maybe they didn't flee and are still inside. What do you think?"
"Rei, I'll leave the inside of the Workshop to you. Anyone still in fighting shape after the golem battle, I'll sort out here and split into interior and exterior teams. You'll move easier on your own than with a partner, right?"
"Yeah. In that case, I'll take you up on that. I'll leave the rest to you, Mirusu."
With that, Rei peeled away from Mirusu and headed toward the Dolan Workshop.
The last time he had come here, he'd needed to sneak in undetected. This time, there was no such need.
He could walk right in through the front.
What's more, last time he had entered through the door, but the Workshop now had multiple entry points, thanks to the numerous golems that had smashed their way out through the walls.
The Dolan Workshop had likely intended to unleash a massive wave of golems all at once rather than releasing them piecemeal—throwing Rei's group into chaos and whittling down their forces in the confusion.
But with Rei and Seto present, even the Workshop's vaunted high-performance golems had fallen with ease.
The adventurers who were supposed to panic and spiral into disarray—initially shaken, yes—once Mirusu instructed them to leave golem destruction to Rei and Seto and focus entirely on defense, the golems found it harder and harder to thin their numbers.
As a result, the Dolan Workshop's plan had completely backfired.
"Still, after destroying that many golems in the Slum District, I'm surprised they had this many left. ...Which makes me wonder why they didn't send them as reinforcements when we were fighting those adventurers before coming here."
At first, Rei had assumed the Workshop held back reinforcements because their golem numbers were low.
But the golems deployed on the Workshop grounds were substantial in number.
If they had committed those golems alongside the adventurers against Rei's group, they might well have achieved meaningful results.
Puzzled by that strangely inconsistent behavior, Rei set the questions aside for now and stepped through a hole in the wall to get inside.
"Is this... a conference room or something?"
Judging from the broken chairs and tables scattered across the floor, it was most likely a conference room.
It was where the golems had emerged from, but they hadn't been built here.
As if to confirm that, in a different wall from the one Rei had entered through—on the side of the room where the door stood—there was another hole about as large as the ones opening to the outside.
"In other words, they broke through that wall from the corridor to get in here, then broke through again to get outside. ...The problem is, there's no one nearby who was controlling those golems."
Rei reached out with his senses, but there was no presence to be found.
Could there be an alchemist skilled at concealing their presence? The thought crossed his mind for an instant, but the simpler explanation—that they had already fled—seemed far more likely.
"Which means the golems were a decoy after all. Or did they bolt once the golems were defeated?"
Given the situation, that was hardly unreasonable.
Even so, Rei's objective remained the capture of everyone inside the Dolan Workshop.
While he had expected the people he came to arrest might be gone, it was undeniably unsatisfying.
"Might as well search for anyone still here. Hard to believe everyone escaped in this short a time... so maybe they're hiding somewhere? Fleeing recklessly would be impossible with Seto watching from the sky, and I've asked Mirusu to send the lightly wounded over to cover the perimeter too."
Adventurers might manage it, but escaping the eyes of Seto soaring overhead should be exceedingly difficult.
Seto possessed exactly that caliber of sharp senses.
"Then again, if there's some kind of underground passage and they're using it to slip out, even Seto might not be able to track them."
No matter how keen Seto's senses were, if someone traveled underground to surface at a different location, detecting them would be a tall order.
Rei wouldn't be surprised to learn the Dolan Workshop had an underground escape route.
The room where Anne and the other illegal slaves had been imprisoned, along with the room where the necromancy rituals were performed, had both been constructed underground.
Even Ilunara and the others who had worked at the Workshop for years had testified that they'd had no idea such underground rooms existed.
If so, it wouldn't be strange for the Workshop to have prepared an underground passage as an emergency exit.
"The question is how to find it. Magic is... probably out."
Rei had magic to create searching flames, but with this many holes blown through the building and rubble scattered everywhere, even that magic seemed unlikely to pinpoint anything.
As he scanned the surroundings... he suddenly caught wind of a presence approaching this location.
"In that case, finding someone and interrogating them would be the fastest way. ...Hey, what do you think? You, who started running the second you heard my voice."
"Eep!"
The instant the person realized Rei's words were aimed at them, they bolted from the spot at full speed... but of course, an ordinary person with no particular physical training had zero chance of outrunning Rei.
Rei closed the gap in a flash and seized the fleeing figure's arm.
"I-I'm so sorry!"
That cry was not the man's voice Rei had expected—it was a woman's. A young woman's, at that.
"...Huh?"
A dumbfounded sound escaped Rei's lips.
Of course it did. He had expected a Dolan Workshop alchemist left behind in the chaos... or at the very least, someone who knew something about the situation. Instead, the voice that answered him was this.
Naturally, just because it was a young woman's voice didn't mean she was uninvolved in the current turmoil.
It was highly likely she knew at least something about the circumstances—and there was even a chance she was connected to the Dolan Workshop's darkest secret: the necromancy-based cores.
But... looking at the woman whose arm he gripped, her eyes welling with tears, Rei couldn't possibly believe she fit any of those expectations.
"Just to be sure—you're from the Dolan Workshop, correct?"
"Y-yes, I am, but... what on earth happened? When I came to, everything was like this, and everyone was suddenly gone..."
To Rei, the woman didn't appear to be lying.
If so, then she truly knew nothing... or else she was capable of deceiving Rei so completely that he couldn't detect a single trace of falsehood.
And from where Rei stood, there was no question she was the former.